On Tuesday, January 22, 2019, David Peace will be reading from and discussing his latest novel Patient X: the Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, published by Faber & Faber (UK) and Alfred A. Knopf (US) in 2018, and by Bungei Shunju in Japan in 2019.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (芥川龍之介) was one of Japan's great writers - author of the stories 'Rashomon (羅生門)' and 'In a Bamboo Grove (藪の中)', most famously - who lived through Japan's turbulent Taisho period, including the devastating 1923 Earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just thirty-five in 1927.

Inspired and informed by Akutagawa's stories, essays, letters and life, David Peace has fashioned a most extraordinary novel of tales. An intense, passionate, haunting paean to one writer, it also thrillingly explores the act and obsession of writing itself, and the role of the artist, both in public and private life, in times which darkly mirror our own. The novel has been described as "one of the most original and intriguing books you'll read this year," and "the most illuminating commentary possible that Anglophone readers could find on this compelling figure." David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, declared Patient X to be "the best work to date" by David Peace, and Ian Sansom (The Guardian) wrote, "Unlikely as it seems, Peace's extraordinary, highly performative style is as well suited to depicting Akutagawa's various struggles as a writer as it was to portraying the drama of being Brian Clough (a famous English football player and manager)."

David Peace - named in 2003 as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists - was born in 1967 and brought up in Yorkshire in England. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty, and Nineteen Eighty-Three); GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2005; The Damned Utd, and Red or Dead, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. The final part of his Tokyo Trilogy - to follow Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City - will be published after Patient X, his tenth novel. He lives in Tokyo and lectures in the Department of Contemporary Literature at the University of Tokyo.

The library committee is offering a cocktail party - "Meet the Author" - starting at 6:15 pm, followed by dinner at 6:45 pm (Menu: TBD). Drinks can be ordered on a cash basis from the bar in the room. Book Break charges are 2,100yen / 3,500yen (members / non-members) per person. The member price is applicable to members' guests.

To FCCJ members: Sign up now at the reception desk (03-3211-3161) or on the FCCJ website. To help us plan proper seating and food preparation, please reserve in advance, preferably by noon of the day of the event. Those without reservations will be turned away once available seats are filled. Reservations cancelled less than 24 hours in advance will be charged in full.

To non-members: Sign up now at the reception desk by email (front@fccj.or.jp). Please reserve and pay in advance by Thursday, January 17th. Those without reservations will be turned away once available seats are filled. No refund is available unless the event is cancelled for the reasons on our part.